Wednesday January 31, 2007

Rubber Banned ( or a postman's litter )

Tuesday January 30, 2007

Waking the Dead

This series is currently on our televisions. It is led by Trevor Eve who plays Peter Boyd who is in charge of this Head of Cold Case Unit. Some folks might remember his as Shoestring a private investigator. He would like to forget that I think.... Boyd is very different. He is a maverick, very impatient, aggressive with suspects he pretty much shows off all the bad traits you could hope to find in a policeman. He is also pretty nasty with his team rarely thanking them for their work and they never seem to have a night out together. In one series we watch him being counciled for his behavior and it turns out he had a son who went missing who was never found. Sue Johnston is excellent as Grace Foley who is the teams Psychological Profiler who does her best to keep Boyd in check. She will be remembered for her role in Brookside and of course the Royle family. Wil Johnson plays Spencer Jordan a fairly unremarkable part for him. Tara FitzGerald is Eve the cigarette smoking Pathologist who does the clever work. Sadly she does not have the same talents or looks as her predecessor that was Holly Aird as Frankie Wharton who had as many brains as the rest of the team put together and was really charming. She was first seen by me in Inspector Morse , Last bus to Woodstock. Also no longer in the series is Claire Goose as Mel Silver who might not have had many brains but was a delight to look at. She died on one of the teams investigations - a sad day for the programm. Félicité Du Jeu is ok as Stella but the jury is still out wether she will be held in my affections as much as Claire Goose. The programs are usually split over two nights - Sunday/Monday - why don't the BBC do two hour programs anymore! Not a bad show.

Monday January 29, 2007

A Birthday weekend

It having been my birthday on Friday we had a couple of celebratory events. First on Friday we took the train the Shiplake and had a meal at the excellent Baskerville Arms. On the Saturday we drove off in the direction of Oxford to do a walk near Thame. We started by the Falcon Pub on the busy B4012. After half a mile along the road we turned off and entered it being a very extensive parkland with lots of sheep roaming around. After a while we saw the house itself, quite grand and after leaving one of the fenced areas off parkland we past a new tree plantation and a very unusual large tree house with odd shaped windows could be seen. You could not get lost in the park, every so often a railway sleeper with its top painted white would show you the way to go. Eventually the parkland ended and we went past Manor farm and then joined a lane entering the very pretty village of Sydnenham. We past its attractive old school that was built in 1849 the money to build it being donated by a Baroness Wenman who owned the park at the time. It was enlarged in 1886 but closed in 1949 it is now being used as the village hall. We got to the pub the Crown Inn only to find it was closed for this Saturday lunchtime! Opposite the pub was the village's pretty church.

We knew after the second leg of the walk was an alternative pub that we both hoped would be open so we headed on towards Towersey. We followed a series of fields most with sheep in them and lots of Red Kites doing so well in this area after being introduced years ago flying above our heads. Eventually we met the B4445 and crossed it entering a smaller road towards Towersey. After a mile we saw the disused railway track that would take us back to Thame . About 1/2 a mile further on could be seen the pub and we decided to carry on hoping it would be open which it was. I had a nice lunch and we turned back and climbed up the bank onto the old track now called the Phoenix track. Just after we joined the track was a modern odd looking seated sculpture and all along the route were a series of odd sculpture's. Also along the walk was a tree with lots of trainers hanging in pairs from it. We have seen this before in this area but do not know what they are all doing in the tree! We carried on for two miles returning to Thame A nice six mile walk.

We then drove into the town of Thame which is quite attractive it having been an important market town in the 13th century. It has lots of Inns/Pubs and hotels. We went in the BirdCage which is the oldest which specialises in lots of very odd sausages Kangeroo,Springbok, Ostrich, Buffalo, Pheasant & Whisky among others. We then drove through Long Crendon and then onto Brill. This is another pretty village and has a lovely old Post Mill six hundred feet above sea level.

A post mill is built on a post that means the whole structure can be rotated to face the wind. It milled Barley until 1919 where it produce one hundred and eighty pounds flour per hour - a modern roller mill can produce seven thousand pounds in that time now. Around it the ground was uneven with several rolling hills and round mounds. These it is said inspired Tolkien to come up with the idea of the Hobbit's houses. The reason for these effect was the area was a important clay/pottery/brick producing area which started in the 1200's. Bricks were produced in Brill right up to the 1900's when their were eight companies producing bricks in the village. Thame Grammer School and Waddesdon Manor were both built using Brill bricks. We then went back to the Angel at Long Crendon had a rest and a great meal in the restuarant. The following day we went to Whiteleaf and started a walk at the Red Lion and headed up a wooded path to the summit of Whiteleaf Hill. Here it was very windy and at the summit we had great views all around. Here we should have seen a White Cross cut into the grass said to be the site of a former windmill but we managed to miss that. Further along again missed by us is a larger version said to be a navigation device used in prehistoric times.

We kept just inside the wood and headed downhill but here something went wrong with our navigation. We met some fellow walkers and they showed us the way to a pub near our starting point the Plough at Cadsden where we had lunch before crossing a golf course and heading back to the Red Lion then driving home.

( Jan 29 2007, 12:00:01 AM PST ) Permalink

Friday January 26, 2007

Happy Birthday!

To me. Forty Seven today. For an environmentally friendly firework display to celebrate this fact click here .

( Jan 26 2007, 12:00:02 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [1]

Over the line

As you approach junctions very often white lines split the traffic into lanes. As you get closer to the junction the lines appear so the traffic can split into the right lane. However when it is really busy you can't get to you lane as there are cars in the way. What people are doing is jumping past the queue of cars to get to their line. If you are crossing the junction and going in the opposite direction you can often meet these cars on your side of the road. The other day I met a Chelsea Tractor doing this and I am afraid the driver did not see me or had decided I was expendable. Later that week another driver in his desire to get past me banged mirrors with me. Even more incredible on the same road a driver skipped past several of us and then nipped back into our lane! I don't know how to fix this but its just another symptom of a lack of courtesy on our roads..

( Jan 26 2007, 12:00:02 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [2]

Thursday January 25, 2007

Word processing

I was thinking about how Word Processing has changed over the years I have been in the computer industry. My first job in computing had me work for a company that wrote CAD/CAM software. Part of the package was of course documentation. When I joined they printed this off using Diablo printers that used ink tape and golfball print heads I think. Any graphics they had was cut and pasted onto the printout and then I guess photographed and printed. It was very time consuming. I think they used a word processing language on the Prime Computers a bit like Nroff I imagine.

I suppose the next development was the company using Laser printers. These were huge and expensive. I can't remember the company name and I know the company at this point experimented with Tex written by Donald Knuth. The first wysiwyg - what you see is what you get processsor we saw was Interleaf on a Sun 3/50. But for whatever reason we went for a propriety Xerox system which was also wysiwyg and the secretaries also ended up using it. Eventually the system was replaced after I left and I think they might have ended up with Interleaf.

At my second Computer job we had an Apple Laserwriter which was much more compact and of course introduced me to Postscript. Not that I could ever write Postscript but I know Chris can . We had filters on the print server which was running SunOs 4.x which could take ascii and other formats and print them out. As demand grew we went for larger and faster printers at this time I had gone back a step and was using nroff/troff - which I used to like. The company had then standardised on Xios software running on PC's running their own OS. Persistant compatibility document transfer problems between the engineers who by then were using PC's running DOS and using Word Perfect meant the company moved everyone over to Word Perfect including Sun Workstation users who used a version written for Unix.

So to get us up to date I guess Microsoft seem to be dominating things but at Sun we use Staroffice/Openoffice. The great thing about this is its available for many platforms and won't lock you in as Word tries to. The world of WP has certainly come a long way..

( Jan 25 2007, 12:00:01 AM PST ) Permalink

Wednesday January 24, 2007

White Wednesday after Black Tuesday...

After Excellent news on Black Tuesday where we reported that in Q2 we returned to profit and again beat the analysts best predictions. Well done to everyone in Sun and our partners for making this happen. Meanwhile I bring you White Wednesday the first snow fall of 2007.

This picture is dedicated to all my friends in the Asia Pacific Region who never get to see this stuff...

( Jan 24 2007, 12:00:04 AM PST ) Permalink

Spaghetti Carbonara

One of my favourite spaghetti dishes is this. There are many versions but this simple one is good I think. We fry two decent sized onions - you can never have enough - in a little olive oil. Cook on a low heat for ages until they are really soft. Add four or more slices of bacon, - smoked is best which have been cut up into small cubes. Meanwhile cook enough pasta for two people until just ready to eat. Take two fresh eggs and a small pot of cream and mix together with a fork. Once the pasta is cooked drain it, add to the onion/bacon mix and stir in. Pour in the cream/egg mixture and heat through until the egg is cooked. Season. Serve into warm pasta bowls. Excellent!

( Jan 24 2007, 12:00:02 AM PST ) Permalink Comments [4]

Tuesday January 23, 2007

Flat beer.

( Jan 23 2007, 12:00:02 AM PST ) Permalink

Monday January 22, 2007

One and a half walks..

We took off to Mortimer on Saturday to do a walk around the village. Our first problem was the pub we parked by was closed for refurbishement. The car park was by the first of two ponds in the village called the Fairground Ponds. An interesting history board told what had happened to them over the years. The earliest history tells of when they were used as drinking water for animals who drovers moved across the countryside. When steam lorries were used to move animals they would top up their water supply at these ponds later on. Cart wheels were also soaked in the water during the process of fitting the metal rim to them. Both ponds were also much larger than they are today but never very deep as pictures of horses standing in them show. Back to the walk we passed by the war memorial and turned left. A short distance down the road and we turned right off the road and went through bracken, holly bushes and trees. As we came out of this tunnel the heavens opened with heavy rain and hail. We waited for a while but then turned around back to the car.

On the way back to the house we stopped at a pub called The Magpie and Parrot. This is what pubs used to be like years ago when they where just rooms in peoples houses. The pub does not do food or any fancy snacks apart from plain crisps. Free peanuts were in bowls on the tables. It was nice to know there are some real pubs still around. The pub has beer festivals and other events. Back home it was time to give the Grape and Wysteria their yearly pruning.

On the Sunday after an overnight storm and with strong cold winds blowing we went to do a walk between Wargrave and Crazies Hill electing to start it at the latter place. We had a drink at the Horns and after going back to the car to put our walk boots on we spotted this old Rolls Royce in the car park.

We left the pub and walked past its school and village hall. Also visible was the old Henley Town Hall moved to its new position in 1897. We carried straight on and just by the pretty Rebecca's Cottage we turned off down a footpath. Just after the cottage was house with its own small gauge railway in the garden with a bridge and cutting. Before reaching its famous well we turned right again through a small copse. After our path ran out we dropped down to the road and then turned off towards Bottom Bowles Wood picking up Green Lane. Just before entering another small wood we took the route of a permitted path which will no longer be available after September this year. We crossed Blakes road in Upper Wargrave and after crossing two recreation grounds we walked through a long winding road through a large housing estate. Crossing Blakes road again we headed for distant trees over another field walking along Highfield Road before turning off to go over two large fields. Behind us were some trees - Oak I think.

Here our luck was to run out. After going through part of a Golf course and going down and up out of a valley we were to turn right on Penny's Lane. Some kind of diversion before had got us horribly lost and we eventually turned up at the road between Henley and Wargrave. We knew two miles up the road it would have us back in Crazies Hill which we plodded along rather cheesed off. A four mile walk ended up being six miler and apart from the exercise was not enjoyable as it might have been.

Friday January 19, 2007

The Last road race - Richard Williams

I got this book as one of my Christmas presents from Santa this year. It is a brilliant book on the 1957 Pescara Grand Prix race. The track is a triangle shaped course on the Adriatic coast and just under sixteen miles long. Williams starts the book with the drivers arriving at the track , not in jets/helicopters as they do now but in all sorts of transportation. The race would be another challenge between the Red cars of Italy and the Green of Britain - now challenging the domination of those cars with the likes of Vanwall, Cooper . It was also a conflict between Sterling Moss and Fangio with the former now being able to match the Argentian's pace on the track.

Williams then spends time discussing the place itself and then the two English drivers still alive who both drove at the race Moss and Brooks. In Moss's house are two steering wheels both damaged during dramatic crashes; first in 1960 at Spa the second which ended his career at Goodwood in 1962. He was now driving for Vanwall who although having a fast car had one that was slightly fragile at certain tracks. Brook's house was adorned with racing pictures one taken at Spa where he won for Vanwall in 1958. The book then covers two the sets of cars the Reds and the Greens. For this race only one Ferrari was entered and this was a privateer as Enzo Ferrari was refusing to take part due to the pressure of the attacks on him and his team due to the number of his drivers who had been killed that year. He was even considering withdrawing from the sport for ever. Fangio was in a Masarati there were works and private entries with those cars. The Green cars were reaching their ascendancy, they were challenging the dominance of Italy at last. Vanwall led the charge funded by a rich industrialist Tony Vandervell who eventually withdrew from racing when the body count got to high for him. Alongside them but behind them on the grid where the Cooper cars built in a two story garage in Surbiton - the cars were light but lacked the power of the other cars but were still getting points paying places at Grand Prix races.

So the scene is set and the practice starts. The Ferrari claims pole with Moss, Fangio behind it. Musso in the Ferrari initially leads the race but the partisan crowd is soon disapointed when Moss takes the lead and wins the race. By lunchtime the straw bales are being moved out of the way to re-open the roads to normal traffic and the asphalt that carried Moss and his peers at breathtaking speeds of 190Mph plus are now the home of more sedate traffic. Tony Brooks says that unlike modern races where everyone leaves as soon as the race was over then drivers and others met for dinner and talked - he blames the lack of meeting and communication between drivers that causes the problems we see in modern day Formula One.

At the end Williams takes us through the drivers of that race and many lost their lives in cars. Moss was never to win a championship loosing out this year by one point. A final quote from Williams on the drivers of that era They were no angels, most of them , but they lived by a set of values that included honour, patriotism and an acceptance of mortal risk. Even the most famous of them was not overwhelmed by their celebrity. They kept a sense of proportion that allowed them to maintain normal relationships with the rest of humanity . Great book.

Thursday January 18, 2007

Orchids for Dummies...

When you think of Orchids hot steaming greenhouses come to mind and plants that refuse to flower despite the best care and attention you give them. This plant was given to my wife five years ago I reckon and it has only stopped flowering for one month since she got it. It sits in the kitchen on the window sill and just flowers. It gets a drop of water now and again and it just carries on flowering. The only thing to be careful of is the flower stem. Don't cut it off or prune it until you are really sure no more buds will appear. Very often when it finishes flowering on one bit it will branch a sub stem off and flower on that. So I almost wait until the stem goes brown before I even consider pruning it at all. These plants are available in most stores/garden centres.

Wednesday January 17, 2007

Remember this story?

Remember this story? Well it came up again when I got my insurance renewal.I had been told after last years incident my premium would rise by 50%. The renewal form had it go up by 100%! I rang the company and after going back and forth to a handful of departments it seemed it went up as I had a claim against me in 2005. I did not remember such a claim where a third party had informed my insurance company that I had hit them. It then came clear to me. The insurance company said no money had passed hands and of course it was the incident as above where the Police visited us one night and expected to find my car bashed in by the incident. So I managed to get the no claims re-instated for 2005 and the premium reduced. So if you have such incidents happen to you its worth checking with your insurance what your company has stored about such incidents..

Tuesday January 16, 2007

Five things you did not know about me yesterday.

Having been tagged by Geoff I thought I should do my duty and list five things folks do not know about me... Trouble is I have let a lot of the interesting/printable stuff out on this weblog over the years and not much I'd like to share is left...

One. I am left handed. But I eat right handed.

Two. My favourite tipple is Chilean Merlot or their Carmenere . I started my alcohol consumption with bitter beer, also Guiness - mixing it with cider now and then. I then developed a liking for Single Malt Whiskey's and then onto French Red's. However I later found the Chilean offerings much better and at more or less the same price.

Three. At home when I eat a meal like Pasta I eat the pasta first then the sauce ingredients. If its Sunday Roast I leave the best bit potatoes till last. Basically I eat my favourite bit of a meal last.

Four. My nickname as a boy was humph. I got it as there were two Paul's in my group of friends and I got the nickname - he kept his forename.

Five. Like Geoff I did go to Church as a child/young boy. I never believed and I think it was a way my parents had the house to themselves on Sunday morning.

Well that is is I am done - I won't be tagging anyone else. Time to hide behind a rock...

gphoto GP_SYSTEM_IS_FILE problems

I was using gphoto2 with a workstation at home running nv bld55. Gphoto2 was been working perfectly until now... It finds the camera, downloads the data and where I think it is going to save the file I see this:

$ /usr/sfw/bin/gphoto2 -P
Loading camera drivers from '/usr/l... Detected a 'Canon:Digital IXUS 400'.
Downloading 'IMG_5112.JPG' from folder '/DCIM/151CANON'...
ld.so.1: gphoto2: fatal: relocation error: file /usr/sfw/bin/gphoto2: symbol GP_SYSTEM_IS_FILE: referenced symbol not found
Killed

Gphoto2 still works fine on my SunRay@ home also using Nevada.. and ldd on gphoto2 looks the same on the SunRay and on the workstation.

Someone at work had better luck with Google than me and found this . The workaround is to run

gphoto2 --quiet --camera "Canon PowerShot A610 (PTP mode)" --get-all-files

Thanks Kevin.